Railway_Digest__February_2018

The Q Train food experience
The food served is nothing like any of the former ‘Lander’ services.
The Q train offers six course meals, with a menu carefully designed
so the taste of each course “matches”, starting with ricotta as entrée,
follow by Sage Farm (located at Bannockbun, near Geelong) salted
beef. The delicious salted beef brings out the appetite, while also
perfectly preserving the taste of the texture of the beef. This was
follow by Portarlington Mussels, which, while not quite the same as
the former Queenslander class’s seafood platter lunch, the coriander
and the mint sensation highlighted the ‘marine’ flavour of the mussels.
Tasty Barongarook pork followed, with tastebuds overwhelmed by the
sweetness and the smell of the crispy roast pork with a BBQ aroma! The
main course of Sage Farm Lamb Two Ways immediately follows.
This was possibly the best lamb, in fact the best meal I ever had in
my life! It was cooked to medium rare, well marinated and full of
tenderness and finished with local Wattle Grove honey and chocolate.
In many ways the meal exceeded what the Queenslander class on
the Sunlander used to offer.
Above: MCC1521 ‘Club Loco’,
seen here at Drysdale on
Wednesday 21 October 2017,
was built as a club/lounge car
in 1958, then refurbished as
a disco club car in 1992 for
the Queenslander/Spirit of the
Tropics. At the time, it was
claimed to be the first disco on
wheels! Around 1999 it was put
in storage, until revived by The
Q train in 2017.
Left: Watching the sunset
through the windows of the
Q class dining car, the same
evening, as the train passes
a wheat field near Suma
Park between Queenscliff
and Mannerim. The Q train
hard-cover menu sitting on
the table is an original QR
Queenslander class menu that
has been ‘recycled’.
FEBRUARY 2018 49
49Preservation & Tourist